We all live by stereotypes to some extent, because they are what has been taught to us. The only difference is in who chooses to defy them. But generations of school curriculums making a separate category for African-American history and literature, for example, teaches us in turn to divide our population and categorize groups’ characteristics separately. How can it not?  Then later, we’re told that it’s wrong to do so; yet it has been taught to us (for whatever reason). And I wonder if the aggregate confusion bred by our educational system (and other sources, of course) in turn breeds the shame and anger and discrimination we minorities run into. What I’m saying is I see an insidious cycle. We’re all taught by implication, at least, to divide populations, but we’re also taught, by higher education or further thought, that it’s wrong to do so. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this mass confusion is what leads people to exasperation and shallow thinking and bigotry (please see my post Raising Children in Diversity in the ‘Pop-a-wheelies’ category.) It’s easier to accept the little box of thinking wrapped with a nice rigid bow, and to ‘kill the wrong messenger,’ taking frustration and anger and hatred out on the group that was separated unjustly from the rest of the population in the first place.